Scale helps but is not necessary to value-based care practices, says Risant Health CEO Jaewon Ryu, M.D., J.D.

In this first segment of an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive, Jaewon Ryu, M.D., J.D., CEO of Risant Health, discussed the benefits of implementing value-based care at a larger scale. Ryu's views are nuanced. He says that scale "has its advantages in developing the right systems, the right technologies, making investments in processes that have stood the test of time, and really benefit creating a more consistent approach.” But he is not a sine qua non absolutist, either. “I don’t think it is the one and only. Is it possible to succeed in value-based care even in the absence of scale? I think it is. And we see bright spots across the industry on that, whether it’s physician groups, multispecialty primary groups and so forth.”

Ryu was the first author of an article published in the February 2026 edition of NEJM Catalyst about Risant Health adapting and testing a set of value-based practices developed at Kaiser Permanente to the pair of health systems that Risant comprises, Geisinger Health in north central Pennsylvania and Cone Health in North Carolina. Those value-based practices include an ambient clinical assistant tool, value-based care guides, an intelligent triage tool and a Care Without Delay program that is designed to coordinate and smooth out the transitions among emergency department, inpatient, postacute and home care.

Early results show that the value-based practices reduce the length of hospital stays and decrease the number of referrals to specialists, according to the results that Ryu and his colleagues reported in NEJM Catalyst. The ambient listening tool was associated with a 58-minute decrease in the time writing notes per clinical day, according to Ryu and his colleagues.